My name is Erna Winters, director of Public Library
Kennemerwaard. A booming library 30 kilometers north of Amsterdam, with 130
employees, 14 branches, working for 225.000 inhabitants of 4 municipalities.
Our libraries have nearly 52.500 patrons and nearly 1 million visitors per
year.

First let me take you back around 40 years ago to a
small town in the eastern part of the Netherlands. There was a girl, child from
a labourer. That girl went to the local public library, and discovered the
world there. That public library was the threshold to education, learning new
ideas, broadening her horizon. That girl is standing here today before you, as
a living proof that libraries have great influence on people’s lives, and open
doors for people who otherwise have no access to knowledge and information.

Libraries have the task to give free access to
information to all people. This is based on the human rights of freedom of
speech and expression and Dutch legislation. Dutch law requires that the public
library plays a vital role in society by performing societal tasks necessary to
have an educated population. On the side of the individual, in order to be able
to express an opinion one needs to be able to take notice of and be able to
handle all information that is needed to form this opinion.

In the times before internet
and online services libraries fulfilled this task by lending books to patrons. The
exception in Dutch copyright law based on the European guidelines provides libraries
the legal right to do so. Libraries pay a remuneration fee for each book that
is borrowed. To give you an idea, on a yearly basis our library pays around €
200.000,- lending rights for books and other media. All public libraries in the
Netherlands pay over € 11 million lending rights annually.

Libraries select based on their knowledge of their
community which books they will purchase for their local collection. Based on
rules of interlibrary lending in the Dutch library network, a citizen can
always get a copy of a book even when it is not available in their local
library.

Now, while internet and digitization completely
changed the way information is distributed, libraries face a major problem in
performing their legal task to give free
access to information to all citizens. People have an increasing demand
for e-content and e-books. The growth in sales of e-books doesn’t go as fast as
was first expected. Last year 5 % of the books that were sold in the
Netherlands were e-books. Overall we can
say that e-books sales and e-books loans are rising in the Netherlands.

citizens expect
libraries to keep up with the development of digitization. Libraries are more
than willing to take up this challenge. The e-bookplatform of the Dutch
libraries can boast 1,3million loans in 2015, and already the same amount in
the first half year in 2016, and we’re still counting. 1 million of all 17
million Dutch people has an e-bookaccount. This ebookplatform in my opinion has two big
advantages:

1.By
having a legal platform for ebooks, accessible for every Dutch citizen that has
an account at the e-library, we make it easy and affordable. And it helps to
prevent piracy. By having a legal alternative people do not have to turn to
illegal copies of e-books.

2.All
the titles available on the platform have been
paid for. Publishers receive
a negotiated
fee for the license. So we are a part of the market for the
publishers, and judging by the numbers of loans and what publishers get paid
for it, I would say it doesn’t do them any harm.

Although we are very satisfied with the numbers of
e-books that are borrowed, we are not happy with what we can buy. You would
think that in an open market you could buy anything you like at a certain
price. This however sadly is not the case.

Within the current copyright laws e-books are not
considered to be a book. It is a licensed service. That means that libraries
have to negotiate with every publisher on price, conditions, lending periods,
how many lendings, etc. If negotations fail to have a result, libraries are not
allowed to purchase this e-book. Our patrons, like all European citizens, are deprived of
the information in those books. At the counter of the libraries the staff has
to answer patrons that wonder why a popular book that they want to lend as an
e-book is not available. Their answer is, when they want to keep it simple
without going into the details of a very complicated issue of copyright
regulation, is that we as libraries are not allowed to buy the book and lend it
out. That’s something that an average patron does not understand, and frankly I
can’t blame them.

Libraries are always associated with lending books but actually this is just an instrument
in the role libraries play for development of people and society. Literacy and
specifically illiteracy is an increasing problem. In Europe aprox 75 million
people are unable to read and write on a level required to be able to
participate. Now, with thousands of refugees entering Europe the number of people
that need to learn our languages will grow. Libraries rise to the occasion and
are reaching out to the refugees with special programs. With an overall good
working set of copyright rules libraries all over Europe could help these
refugees easier to have access to literature in their own language, as well as
good learning materials. Another important group that we would be able to help
are the working immigrants, Europeans that travel through Europe for work and
that are deprived of a good selection of e-material at the local library of the
town that they have their temporary residence.

We as libraries stand for the human right of free
access to information for the inhabitants of Europe. Europe’s economic ambition
to be a leading party when it comes to innovation, knowledge and creativity requires
literate, educated and skilled people. For that you need to give more room to
creativity to support that economic growth. This is one of the issues of the
Euopean Commission in reforming the Digital Single Market. Copyright as it is
now is a barrier to support this ambition of the European Commission.

What we need of you, members of the European
Parliament is to reform the copyright law. I, speaking for the visitors, users
and patrons of all European libraries, strongly plea to place e-books under the
same copyrights as paper books. We need a flourishing bookmarket and production
of many good books. And writers, publishers, and booksellers who make a fair
income. In the paper book world
libraries in The Netherlands are roughly responsible for 12% of the sales. So libraries are part of the book market. There has
to be a fair remuneration for the rightholders, which is the case in the
copyright rules for paper books. By doing so, all citizens of Europe can have
access to all information through their public libraries. And thus make it
possible for all Europeans to develop themselves , to contribute to their local
community, and to add to a prosperous, creative and innovative Europe.

Dear members of Parliament, we know copyright is a
matter with a lot of different concerns and interests. We fully support the
idea of a fair balance in copyright for right holders and consumers. We, the Dutch libraries, are also involved in a court case at de
European Court of Justice. We are awaiting the judgment later this autumn. We
do not only ask you to take action, we ourselves are also taking steps to make
progress in this difficult process.

By reforming the copyright into the digital age the
next ten year old girl, daughter of a labourer will still have the opportunity
to become what she wants to be…. a scientist, a publisher, a member of the
European parliament, a writer or maybe even a librarian…